“Bringing Out the Dead” is released on 4K Blu-Ray

While Taxi Driver and Raging Bull essentially established Martin Scorsese and Paul Schrader as cinematic giants, and The Last Temptation of Christ continues to enjoy a strong cult following and was an early Criterion Collection release (Spine #70, to be exact), their last collaboration, 1999’s Bringing Out the Dead with Nicolas Cage and Patricia Arquette, has yet to receive the recognition and praise of their earlier works.

Paramount, the studio behind the film, seems to be looking to change that next September, as it plans to release the psychodrama on a 4K UHD Blu-Ray to mark its 25th anniversary. Reassessing this unfairly maligned conclusion to a decades-long partnership, IndieWire lists our reasons why Bringing Out the Dead is worth bringing out of the shadows.

A spiritual sequel to “Taxi Driver”, which cannot be compared to “Taxi Driver” at all

At the time of its release, Bringing Out the Dead may have been unjustified by its narrative and visual similarities to Scorsese and Schrader’s first collaborative project, Taxi Driver. Like the 1976 masterpiece that preceded it, Bringing Out the Dead focuses on a seedy, neon-lit New York – this time in the early 1990s – and the driver rolling through that hellish landscape. Turning a taxi into an ambulance, Cage plays paramedic Frank Pierce, who, like Travis Bickle, engages in an internal monologue as he speeds sleeplessly through the city, knowing that someone out there needs his help.

And that’s where the similarities mostly end. It may be hard to look past them, but if you compare Bringing Out the Dead to Taxi Driver, you can also compare it to a whole host of Schrader’s films, including First Reformed and The Card Counter. On its own, though, it’s a stunning artistic exploration of faith in crisis and the forces that push you toward your better angels. Cage’s Frank is, in fact, the opposite of Travis Bickle, someone who feels reluctantly compelled to help others through their pain, knowing that his own won’t heal until theirs is.

A film about people in their worst moments and those who come to their aid

As with all of Scorsese and Schrader’s work, Bringing Out the Dead has many religious overtones and undertones, with Frank functioning as a saint of sorts, and everyone around him – his partners (John Goodman, Tom Sizemore and Ving Rhames), the hospital staff, the townspeople, the families of those he brought in – functioning as various kinds of angels, good and bad, heartless and emotionally vulnerable, pulling him in directions he follows only to avoid his true calling.

Scorsese himself expressed his feelings about the film in an interview with Roger Ebert in 2004. He told the late critic, “I spent 10 years dealing with ambulances. My parents going to the hospital all the time. Phone calls in the middle of the night. I exorcised all that. These city paramedics are heroes – and saints, they’re saints. I grew up next to the Bowery and watched the people who worked there, the Salvation Army, Dorothy Day’s Catholic Worker Movement, all helping lost souls. They’re the same kind of people.”

One of Scorsese’s best vocal performances

If you love a good Easter egg, listen closely for the male dispatcher (the female, Dispatcher Love, is played by none other than Queen Latifah) who calls out emergency calls for Frank and his partners to respond to. Scorsese is known for appearing in his films, as a lighting technician in the club scene in After Hours, a photographer in Hugo, and most recently at the end of Killers of the Flower Moon, but his voice alone is just as common in his work. In Bringing Out the Dead, his voice acts as both director and conductor, driving Frank further into the madness and suffering of his life.

The soundtrack is a blast

Scorsese’s eclectic tastes and influences are evident: to capture the sound of the early ’90s, he draws heavily on alternative rock groups such as REM, Jane’s Addiction and 10,000 Maniacs, but also incorporates classics from earlier eras such as Frank Sinatra, Martha & the Vandellas and Stevie Wonder. The film’s score was also composed by famed composer Elmer Bernstein, who had previously worked with Scorsese on Cape Fear and The Age of Innocence.

Nicolas Cage thinks the film deserves a second look

Cage delivers one of his finest performances in this film, combining the sharpness he showed in Leaving Las Vegas with the tense humanity he finds in films like Con Air and later The Weather Man. Speaking to Deadline earlier this year, Cage even admitted that Bringing Out the Dead hasn’t yet received the full recognition it deserves.

“The film was marketed in such a way – probably because I had done adventure films – that people thought it was going to be an action/adventure film about an ambulance. Well, it wasn’t,” Cage said. “It was a very painful character analysis of a burned-out paramedic, based on a very good book by Joe Connelly. But it was misunderstood, and I think that this film, perhaps when it comes out in high definition, will be given a new lease of life.”

Thankfully, he didn’t have to wait too long. Along with the 4K UHD transfer, the physical media release includes bonus material including interviews with Scorsese, Cage, Schrader and cinematographer Robert Richardson, as well as videos from the set featuring the entire cast. Check out the new poster for the release below.